Insider Brief
- Panthalassa, a renewable energy and ocean technology company, has raised $140 million in Series B financing led by Peter Thiel, with a broad group of investors including John Doerr, Marc Benioff, and Max Levchin, to fund its pilot manufacturing facility near Portland, Oregon and deploy its Ocean-3 series of autonomous ocean nodes.
- The company’s nodes are self-propelled, floating systems that generate clean electricity from ocean waves and use it to power AI inference computing onboard, transmitting results to land via satellite, with the surrounding ocean providing free cooling that addresses one of the central engineering challenges facing land-based data centers.
- Panthalassa plans to deploy its Ocean-3 pilot nodes in the northern Pacific in 2026 ahead of commercial deployments in 2027, positioning ocean-based computing as a solution to the grid capacity, cooling, and permitting constraints that increasingly limit the expansion of terrestrial data centers.
PRESS RELEASE—Panthalassa, a renewable energy and ocean technology company, has announced $140 million in Series B financing led by Peter Thiel, with participation from new investors John Doerr, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, Max Levchin’s SciFi Ventures, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Hanwha Asset Management (USA)’s venture fund, Anthony Pratt, Fortescue Ventures, Future Positive, WTI, Nimble Partners, Super Micro Computer, Sozo Ventures, Dylan Field, Planetary VC, Leblon Capital, Resilience Reserve, Portland Seed Fund, and the Intrepid Oregon Fund. They are joined by returning investors Founders Fund, Gigascale Capital, Lowercarbon Capital, Unless, and WovenEarth.
The funding will complete the company’s pilot manufacturing facility near Portland, Oregon, and accelerate deployment of its Ocean-3 series of nodes, which will perform AI inference computing at sea using power generated from ocean waves.
“There are three sources of energy on the planet with tens of terawatts of new capacity potential: solar, nuclear, and the open ocean,” said Garth Sheldon-Coulson, Co-Founder and CEO of Panthalassa. “We’ve built a technology platform that operates in the planet’s most energy-dense wave regions, far from shore, and turns that resource into reliable clean power. We’re now ready to build factories, deploy fleets, and provide a sustainable new source of energy for humanity.”
Panthalassa’s nodes are autonomous, floating energy systems that are mass-produced from plate steel in coastal factories. They operate in the distant ocean, where they generate clean electricity around the clock. Rather than transmitting energy back to terrestrial grids, Panthalassa uses it directly onboard to power AI chips, sending inference tokens to land by satellite. The surrounding ocean provides free supercooling, addressing one of the largest engineering challenges in land-based data centers and lengthening chip lifetimes.
Panthalassa has spent the past decade developing the core power generation, propulsion, autonomy, and at-sea computing technologies behind the platform. Its Ocean-1, Ocean-2, and Wavehopper prototypes in 2021 and 2024 proved these capabilities at sea. In 2026, the company plans to deploy its Ocean-3 pilot node series in the northern Pacific Ocean, demonstrating AI inference capabilities and refining its manufacturing process in preparation for commercial deployments in 2027.
As demand for new electricity and computing continues to surge, terrestrial data centers face mounting constraints: limited grid capacity, cooling water scarcity, supply chain bottlenecks, permitting delays, and impacts on local communities and infrastructure. Panthalassa’s platform expands energy and AI computing capacity without requiring new data centers or power plants on land, relieving strain on the grid, reducing ecological impacts, and lowering energy costs for families and businesses.
“The future demands more compute than we can imagine,” said Peter Thiel. “Extra-terrestrial solutions are no longer science fiction. Panthalassa has opened the ocean frontier.”
“Panthalassa’s autonomous wave power system is a game changer in addressing global energy needs and clean power generation,” said John Doerr. “It is a triple win: workers benefit, communities benefit, and we gain a strategic asset that strengthens American technological leadership.”
About Panthalassa
Panthalassa is a renewable energy and ocean technology company committed to ensuring a sustainable future for Earth by unlocking the vast energy potential of its oceans. Its self-propelled nodes capture wave energy and use it to generate clean electricity and run AI computing onboard, with data transmitted by low-Earth-orbit satellites. Panthalassa is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Portland, Oregon, and backed by leading investors. For more information, visit panthalassa.com.
Contacts
Abigail Hanson
VSC for Panthalassa
Abigailc@vsc.co
